Chapter 8
BILLY
“I'm surprised you left that pretty little thi-”
“Shut the fuck up, Rune,” I snarl, cutting him off mid-sentence, still focussing on the cold toast in front of me, my fist curling tighter around my butter knife.
The room is dim, large circular chandelier overhead, bulbs on the lowest setting. My brothers, both blood and not, sit evenly spaced out around the oval table, all of us able to see each other easily.
Gore at the opposite end to me, his inked fingers pushing back through his flop of dark brown curls before joining his other hand resting atop the wooden table. Fingers folding together, knuckles cracking as he flicks his gaze up, dark green eyes piercing my pale blue ones.
“You know the first trial will happen any day now,” Gore’s voice is a low rumble, like thunder in the far distance before you’ve even heard the first drops of rain.
I hold his eye, our gazes locked, and it’s as though we are the only two in the room. My oldest brother, ten years my senior, the one I respect the most, not because of that fact, but because of… everything else.
“I know.” It’s all I say, my response could be more, should be more, but there’s just nothing.
I think of her.
Penelope.
My Nellie.
Upstairs.
Alone.
Vulnerable.
It makes my skin itch, my fingers twitching, nails wanting to claw away my own flesh.
I’ve waited twelve very long years to have her back.
By my side.
Despite The Obsidian believing women are nothing more than something to breed.
I feel differently.
Gore feels differently.
Something he’s already suffered for at the hands of Milus, something Dolly, his wife, has already suffered for.
I don’t take his words lightly. Knowing what they, as a couple, have already had to endure. It’s why Dolly’s just not quite… herself, anymore.
Bile sits high in my throat as I think about Milus having access to Nellie. His disciples having access.
How many hands I shall find myself removing in the coming months. How many throats I shall cut. How many bodies I shall have to dissect and dispose of under the cover of night.
How I likely won’t be able to do any of those things to keep her safe at all.
Just dream.
Imagine.
“Just keep her under control.” Gore states it as advice, even though we both know it's an order.
I think of the inverted cross on her forehead, the one I painted on her.
A blessing. From the entire group. For wealth in fertility.
All things she doesn’t yet understand. I wonder, not for the first time, if she ever will.
How does one explain the inner workings of this beast that is The Obsidian without scaring her off.
Petrifying her.
Not that she can ever leave anyway.
Gore’s words sink deeper into my head.
Control.
My lips curve upwards of their own accord, thinking of Nellie blindly following me into the dark. Through a cemetery, down a spiralling pit, into literal obsidian.
She did it all willingly.
But she won’t always.
The blunt blade of my knife glides across the top of the butter, warmed to room temperature, the cool silver handle digging into the slice in my palm.
I glance down at it, the blood dried, the cut fresh. Nellie has one the same. A scar forever mine, ours, carved into each of us. Without thinking, the fingers of my other hand reach up, brushing the fresh wound in my chest. Again, something that, despite what The Obsidian believe, is ours.
Mine and hers.
A branding of me, of us, we Two.
Two.
A number used to identify.
Gore is one, I, two, Bram is three, Tolly four.
We weren’t gifted the pleasure of being called our names until Milus deemed it so.
We were never supposed to use our birth names with each other until Father said so, until we passed enough tests to be fully in, but we did.
My brothers and I, Rune, who is a brother in all but DNA, we always called each other by our names, we never used our numbers.
We meant more to each other than that.
Mean more.
I would kill and die for any one of them. The only people in the world that matter to me.
And Mother.
But now I have Nellie.
That, I think, makes everything I’ve ever known different now.
“Poison,” the word mumbles out of me as I drop my knife to the table with a dull clattering thud. “That’ll be first.” It’s a statement and a question.
“Yes,” Gore’s voice is low, quiet, but so loud inside my head it makes my ears feel like they’re bleeding.
“Spiders.” I nod to myself with my own word, solemn in my resolve.
All members of The Obsidian are to take a Pair, but the Blackwell men can only Pair if their potential life partner passes a series of tests.
I watched Gore and Dolly go through the trials, despite only being a boy at the time, and I remember everything they had to endure. Everything Dolly had to endure.
I was thirteen to her eighteen, Gore twenty-three, each trial lasted only hours, the toll they took on Dolly, though, lasted a lot longer than that.
“It’s what you were given,” Gore confirms, drawing my attention.
My gaze lifting back to him to find his eyes having seemingly never left me at all.
“She can do it,” I tell him, the others around the table still sitting and eating in quiet, listening, waiting.
“I have no doubts,” Gore replies, our eyes still locked, his face shadowed in the low lighting.
Seconds tick by, my heart hammering, and I have the urge to blink, to clear my vision as it starts to cloud over. A million things running through my head, but I don’t look away from him, not until I hear my name, from her mouth.
“Billy,” Penelope whispers from the open doorway at my back, a chill slicing up the nape of my neck like a rusty blade, “I did a bad thing.”